Council meeting minutes from 2025-08-25

minutes of the students' representative council for study programs of computer science

Appointment Committees

There are three open Appointment Committees, for which we can name studentic members. There are the following volunteers:
Quantum Bioinformatics: Abigail, Anton
Quantum Software Systems: Mona, Lucas
Quantum Complexity, Algorithms and Information Theory: Options: Sujata, Nico

We have voted whether the following people without no prior experience:
Lucas: unanimous in favour
Sujata: 8 in favour, 1 abstain
Nico: 7 in favour, 1 against, 1 abstain

We are happy that everyone got into their preferred committee.

It is possible for an appointment committee to name additional advisory members. We will try to do that for the committee where non-experienced students are part of.

Rotation in Base lectures

Base Lectures are a big amount effort to teach, both for Professors, and their assistants. Typically, the assistant is a PhD student.
There are some lectures who rotate through professors (i.e. professors take turns in teaching it).
The lecture TCS and Introduction to Algorithms and Data Structures don't have a rotation, or there only one Professor for each. It does not seem like there is a long-term plan whether there will be a rotation and who will be a part of it. TAs should also rotate, because PhD students still pursue a degree. We think the current situation is not long-term sustainable.

We think that students benefit from the professors rotating more from having a continuous professor.

Even though there is a process going on to replace a leaving professor for one of above courses, there is sentiment that rotating a lecture is not on the mind of the department.

Communicating with the department might be done on a general level, i.e. talk to the professors first, and get their support before acutely addressing this with the Deans. There is also support for taking a more direct and confrontational stance. The latest possibility to discuss is at the the Deans Lunch, however, an earlier point of contact would be more desirable.

We voted whether we want to write an email to the Deans about the problems (8 in favour, 0 against, 1 abstaining), so we are directly going to address our cocerns.

Crowded Core Courses

Meta-discussion: This seems a very discussion: At big problem where everyone will be affected. However for a long time, this has been postponed, and no-one felt responsible. People feel disappointed because such a big topic has been neglected.


On-topic: Lectures are not getting easier. It seems like some lectures are perceived to be easier than others, who will then have lots of students.

Ideas for improving the situation: Gather data on which courses have a spiked amount of students, and then only allow students to take maximally one of them per semester. We don't think this is optimal, however this is not very restrictive on the students side. Other Ideas exist. Some people liked an entry exam that some courses now have.
We theorise that students sign up on the CMS and drop the course early, causing lots of organisational (and tutor) effort.

Anton thinks that right now the optimal solution won't be found right now. They will take the ideas here, think about them (with others, please contact them) as well as professors, and present the results of their mini-task force in a future meeting.

Bigger Excursion Trip

This is a Meta-Discussion.

Last year, there has been an excursion to Strasbourg (for the Christmas Market). It was very well received.
We discuss whether we want to have similar things again in the future. Students fed back that someone kicking off organisation is highly appreciated.
It is not quite as simple to go somewhere where one needs to stay overnight.

Vibes are that we think that these events are great, however it is not quite as easy to organise (one need to finds organisers). We are openly collecting ideas on where to go and discuss ideas in a future meeting.

Study Clout

A group of students approached us again about a product of theirs, the study clout. It is an uniform platform featuring news channel, Admin rights, event management etc.
We had contact to them prior, and were not convinced by them, and don't think there is a benefit over what we currently have.

Nevertheless we are open to see what they can offer, and are willing to give them 10 minutes to present themselves in a future meeting.

Landespreis Hochschullehre

Anton wants to propose the Prog2-precourse as a laureate for the Landespreis Hochschullehre (Award for Teaching in Higher Education). The Prog2-precourse is preparing students for the programming2 lecture. They prepare students for the assembly part of Programming 2 by having lectures on it which then can be practically practised with the self-developed programming Language. The exercises are levels in a maze-solving game, and assembly-specific instructions are used to solve the puzzle. The prog2-precourse also has tutorials, a self-studying phase and a lot more to offer.
Attending Members support the suggestion.

We also noted that the Prog2-precourse is helpful for tutorial quality in Prog2, because they already have feedback on their tutorials by the organising team.

Pupils Information Day

There will be a Information day for Abiturient:innen (A-level pupils). This year, there will be a collaborative booth by Computerlinguistics, Maths and Computer Science.

The study coordination is asking for volunteers to work on ideas for making the Maths & CS-booth more attractive. Currently, there is not much capacity for this, however we are going to ask around among more people.

Research Meet-up

We had the idea of a research meet-up where Professors present their current research to students. This would allow students to know about the current research and opportunities for open PhD-positions, Masters' and Bachelor' theses. It would also be possible for PhD students to present their current research, allowing for possible collaboration.

A while ago, there wasn't high support for this in the Department, however is common practice at other universities. CISPA apparently did something similar a while ago, with good feedback.

We think incorporating companies are a bad idea, because this would quickly become a job fair, and lots of organisational overhead.

Long-term ideas are involving other faculties would be nice for interdisciplinary research or having a Campus-Day-of-open-Door. We might contact the vice-president for research as things might be easily organised top-down.

We think, a meet-up is a great idea and thus are going to contact the Department about the Idea.

Graudation Ceremony

The student council and the FIS, together with the Department, are planning the next graduation ceremony. The previous one was not well perceived among the graduates. Thus, for the next time, there has been more effort to find an interesting alumni talk. There will be more talks, and will take place in the Aula, which is a more festive place than the Günter-Hotz-Lecture hall.

The planned date is the 05th of December. The FIS is asking for helpers at the event, so please keep the date free.